A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged with several counts of torture after he was arrested in July on visa fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 recently expelled President Bashar al-Assad was charged by a federal grand jury in California with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
“It is a huge step toward justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “The trial of Samir Ousman al-Sheikh will reiterate that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live in the United States without responsibility, even if their victims are not U.S. citizens.”
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Federal officials detained the 72-year-old at Los Angeles International Airport in July on immigration fraud charges, specifically because he denied ever prosecuting anyone on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications in Syriaas appears from a criminal complaint. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, bound for Beirut, Lebanon.
Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention centers, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
The government fell victim to a sudden rebel offensive on Sunday, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule and causing the former president to flee to Russia. Insurgents have since freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in multiple cities.
In his role as head of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh is said to have ordered subordinates to inflict pain and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.
He ordered prisoners to the “Punishment Wing,” where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling with their arms outstretched and subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes resulting in broken spines, according to federal officials .
“Our client strongly denies these politically motivated and false allegations,” his attorney, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.
Marino called the case a “misguided use” of government resources by the Justice Department to “prosecute an alien for alleged crimes committed abroad against non-U.S. citizens.”
US authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air base in the capital Damascus. According to prosecutors and the Syrian Emergency Task Force, the victims included Syrians, Americans and people with dual nationalities, including 26-year-old American aid worker Layla Shweikani.
Federal prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.
In May, a French court sentenced three senior Syrian officials to life in absentia for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but historic case against the Assad regime and the first such case in Europe.
Al-Sheikh started his career in police command posts before moving to Syria’s state security apparatus, which focused on countering political dissidents, officials said. He later became head of Adra Prison and brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital Damascus, which has seen violent crackdowns on protesters.
The indictment alleges that al-Sheikh immigrated to the US in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit torture and each of the three torture charges, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two immigration fraud charges.
